Restoring Charity: Values and Judgments: Creating Social Incentives for Good Behavior

Although I am a social scientist, I confess that I'm pessimistic about social science ultimately providing any answers to the questions about poverty and welfare. My skepticism is not meant to disparage the ingenious efforts of my colleagues but rather to question whether real improvements in the conditions of the poor—real changes in the lives of real people—depend much at all on answers to the kinds of questions that social scientists pose. I want to suggest here that there are three things more important than the estimation of another regression equation: a discourse of virtue; a revitalized civil society; and a spiritual foundation that avoids the materialist economic determinism that underlies much argument about social policy, from the left or right.

Now I'm skeptical about social science because modern social science and policy analysis is conducted in a language of cause and effect. "If we design this program, then they will respond in such and such a way." Yet it is my conviction that the core problems of poverty in the ghettos of this country and elsewhere require for their solution a language of values. "We should do this… They ought to do that… Decent people must strive to live in a certain way". And in the discourse of the policy wonk who speaks fluent "conference-ese," there is no place for language like this.

We now know that much of the problem of poverty is connected with the dysfunctional patterns of behavior adopted by young people in our various communities. The issues raised by behavioral dysfunction and the question of who bears responsibility in the face of that dysfunction are inherently moral and political questions for which our nation, as a political and moral community, must produce answers. To find these answers, we must have the will to examine ourselves; how we live, what we value, what we believe. This is an examination that must be conducted not only by the poor but by all of us. For example, a number of critics have emphasized that there is a relationship between the behavioral problems of the poor and the cultural crises that affect the middle- and upper-classes in America, as evidenced by rising divorce rates, persistent failures in our educational system, increases in teen-age suicide, and chronic drug and alcohol abuse. At issue here is our capacity as a moral and political community to engage in an effective discourse about values and ways of living, and to convey normative judgments that arise out of that discourse. I am dubious, for example, that it will ever again be possible for the federal government of the United States—through the Congress or the president—to put the force of its considerable power behind the simple and sensible normative proposition that children should be born to parents after marriage and not before.

In the last quarter century, it has becoming increasingly more difficult for a public figure to give voice to this belief; one that not so very long ago would have been universally seen as appropriate. Consider the collective guffaw with which much influential opinion received the promotion of family values in the last presidential campaign. This was not just partisanship; it was a contemptuous rejection of the very idea of a public discourse that might judge how we should organize our family lives. Even some conservative presidential candidates are reluctant to engage in public rhetoric with a direct moral message. This should tell us something about the limits of politics as a means of addressing profound questions of value. It is therefore the civil sector of families, community organizations, churches, and various private philanthropic undertakings that must do the real work of promoting and instilling values.

The role of the state, while important in matters of public communication, is ultimately quite limited in the matters of transforming the values of individual persons. One source of this limitation is the fact that encouraging good behavior intrinsically requires discriminations to be made among persons based on assessments that are difficult legally and politically for public agencies to make. Having distinguished between right and wrong in public rhetoric, it becomes necessary in the concrete ambiguous circumstances of everyday life to discern the extent to which particular individuals have risen to, or fallen short of, our expectations. Promoting virtue requires that standards be set and communicated and that judgments be made as to whether those standards have been met. The making of such judgments requires knowledge about individual circumstances and the drawing of distinctions between individual cases, which often exceed the capacity of public institutions. Because citizens have due process rights that cannot be fully abrogated, for example, public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in a court of law. Obviously, such judgments carry a high burden of proof as to their legitimacy. Families, churches, and community- based organizations are not so constrained, not to the same degree—at least not yet.

Consider, for example, the difficulty involved for a state-sponsored agent to make the judgment as to whether a welfare recipient has put forward adequate effort to prepare for and find a job. The information available for this decision is generally limited to the observation of a social worker and the self-report of the welfare recipient concerning her activities, together with a check on whether or not job interviews previously arranged have been pursued. Beyond this, very little information can be brought to bear. Action to limit the assistance due to a belief that the recipient was not trying hard enough might not stand up to subsequent judicial review. And indeed such actions might not even be carried out by state employees who believe the obligations thereby imposed were inappropriate or illegitimate.

But, of course, families and communal groups providing help to the same individual would base their continued assistance, in part, upon such information. They would discriminate more finely than a state-sponsored agent ever could between the subtle differences and behaviors among individuals that constitute the real content of morality and virtue. This point is especially critical when behavioral difference may have a disparate impact by race and where charges of racial discrimination could arise. Anticipating these charges, public agents may withdraw—and indeed have withdrawn—from a degree of scrutiny of individual behavior that produced the racially disparate outcome.

The fact is that the instruments available to public agents for the shaping of character are coarse and relatively indiscriminate in comparison to the kinds of distinctions and judgments that people make in their private social lives all the time. Moreover, the ways in which a public agent can sanction an individual's dysfunctional behavior—primarily by withholding financial benefits—may not be as compelling as the threat of social ostracism and peer disapproval that is readily available in private associations. The purpose of these observations is to caution against an overly optimistic assessment of the power of legislation to reverse regrettable trends in the social behavior of our citizens.

It is also the case that state action is rather more fundamentally encumbered by the fact that there is a plurality of views as to what constitutes appropriate values in our society. Public morality reflected in state action is necessarily a thin conception of virtue, weak enough to accommodate the underlying diversity of value-commitments among the various sectors of our society.

This contrasts sharply with the thick concepts of virtue characteristic of the moral communities in which we are embedded in private life. The conflict over sex education illustrates this point. Introducing into the public schools of any large city a curriculum of sex education that teaches the preferability of two-parent families would be resisted by educators who would cite the great number of the students from single-parent backgrounds in their classes, even if, arguably, these are the students most in need of hearing the authoritative expression of such value judgments. Of course, the same would not be true of sex education undertaken in a parochial school context.

My general proposition is that civil society and the state provide complementary inputs into the production of virtuous citizens. Legislators should look for ways to encourage virtue by encouraging the development and expansion of those private voluntary associations in which the real work of character development is best done.

Mutually concerned persons who trust one another enough to establish codes of personal conduct, exchange criticism constructively, and enforce social sanctions against that which is judged undesirable behavior, can create and enforce communal norms that lie beyond the capacity of the state to promulgate effectively.

The coercive resources of the state though great are not subtle. Now the fundamental assumption behind our public language about poverty in the political discourse of the country is a materialist assumption, a materialist viewpoint. Economic factors are supposed ultimately to underlie the behaviors—even those involving sexuality, marriage, childbearing, and parenting—which reflect people's basic understanding of what gives their lives meaning. The view is that behavioral problems can be cured from without; it is said that government can change these behaviors if it can just get the incentives right. Then everything will be fine. This reflects a philosophy of mechanistic determinism wherein the mysteries of human motivation are supposedly susceptible to calculated intervention. The government could solve these mysteries, it is said, if only it were smart enough and sufficiently committed to try.

This economic determinist view of social disorder lends itself easily to the favorite line of partisan argument about social policy. Those who favor expanded government argue that we either pay now with social investments, or pay later with welfare and prisons. And those who want the federal budget to be cut can cite the worsening conditions—for example in the cities—in the face of the growth of social spending over the last generation as evidence that the Great Society has failed. And those who seek a middle way can split the difference by talking about the receipt of benefits being accompanied by an acceptance of responsibility on the part of the poor, though the government must provide services that help the poor to accept their responsibilities.

We are all familiar with this language. And yet the debates at this level are sterile and superficial. They fail to engage questions of personal morality, and they fail to talk about character and values. They do not invoke any moral leadership in the public sphere. The view seems to be that in a pluralistic society such discussion from public officials is inappropriate.

Nor do we teach in our schools—the schools serving this very population—the comparative virtues of alternative ways of living. We give only muted public expression to the judgment that it is wrong to be sexually promiscuous, or to be indolent and without discipline, or to be disrespectful of legitimate authority, or to be unreliable, untruthful, and unfaithful. We no longer teach values but instead offer clarification of the values that the children are supposed somehow to have inculcated without any instruction. We elevate process ("How does one discover his or her own values?") over substance ("What is it that a decent person should embrace?"). It is not clear from our discourse that the behavioral problems in our society involve spiritual issues.

A man's spiritual commitments influence his understanding of his parental responsibilities. No economist, however clever, can devise an incentive scheme for eliciting parental involvement in a child's development that is as effective as the motivations of conscience deriving from the parent's understanding that they are God's stewards in the lives of their children. One can see that the effective teaching of sexual abstinence or the avoidance of violence is enhanced to the extent that one can appeal to spiritual concepts. Effective substance abuse recovery programs, for example, are built around spiritual principles. And reports of successful efforts of reconstruction in the ghetto communities of our country usually reveal a religious institution and a set of devout believers at the center of the effort.

Finally, I would like to discuss these ideas in relation to social problems affecting the black community in the United States. I want to consider just how the moral-ethical sensibilities of black Americans took root in the experience of slavery. My central point is easily stated: Enslaved persons were driven by brute circumstance to create among themselves a culture with spiritual and moral depth of truly heroic proportions. They simply had no choice. The brutality of the assault they endured—upon their persons, their relations one with another, and their sense of dignity and self-respect—was such that, either they would be completely destroyed as moral beings, or they would find a way, through faith, to transcend their condition. As Alan Keyes has puts it in his recent book, Masters of the Dream: "In effect, (the slaves) secured themselves against the depredations of a system devised to destroy their self-respect by storing their sense of personal worth in a form that made it hard to damage and hard to steal away." Enslaved persons had to learn to transcend their material condition, or they would have been destroyed. That "man does not live by bread alone" was for them more than a theoretical proposition, grasping the truth of that proposition was their key to survival.

The Africans brought to America in bondage came to embrace the Christian faith, and to find in it the means of their moral salvation. A wealth of historical, theological, and cultural scholarship amply documents this claim. It is also supported by the surviving primary accounts, and the spirituals and "sorrow songs" of the slaves themselves. This Christian faith, and the relationship with God to which it gave rise, was fundamental to preserving a sense of worth and dignity among enslaved persons. Again quoting Keyes, it permitted "them to feel that they existed in and for themselves, rather than through their relationship with the enslavers." Faith allowed those held permanently in bondage to avoid being consumed by their hatred, their despair, or their fear.

These moral and spiritual values, forged in what Herbert Storing once called "the school of slavery," proved to be profoundly significant in the post-slavery development of black Americans. It was the emphasis on hard work, education, and decent living characteristic of the first generations of blacks after emancipation that made possible their considerable progress. A spirit of self-help, rooted in a deep-seated sense of self-respect, was widely embraced among blacks of all ideological persuasions, well into this century. They did what they did—educating their children, acquiring land, founding communal institutions, and struggling for equal rights—not in reaction to or for the approval of whites but out of an internal conviction of their own worth and capacities. Even acts of black protest and expressions of grievance against whites were, ultimately, reflections of this inner sense of dignity. The crowning achievements of the civil rights movement—its nonviolent method and its successful effort at public moral persuasion—can be seen as the projection into American politics of a set of spiritual values that had been evolving among blacks for over a century.

It is, therefore, with a sense of deep remorse that I must recount how, in the last generation, this ethos of self-reliance, moral rectitude, and unapologetic Christian piety has lost its place of primacy among black political, spiritual, and intellectual leaders. We have, indeed, fallen upon rather hard times. The ideological presuppositions of current black American political advocacy seems a world apart from the historic ethos just mentioned. Some leaders, in civil rights organizations and the halls of Congress, are wedded to a concept of the black condition, and a method of appealing to the rest of the polity, which undermines the dignity of our people. They seek, it would seem, to make blacks into the conscience of America, even at the price of our souls. Though it mocks the idea of freedom to hold that, as free men and women, blacks ought nevertheless to leave the determination of the normative framework of our communal life to the vicissitudes of government policy, this is precisely what has been done. The rhetoric is: "It costs more to keep a young black man in jail for a year than it does to send him to Yale for a year"—as if the difference between his being in jail or at Yale is a matter of the size of some bureaucrat's budget, rather than the behavior of the young man himself, and of those charged with his guidance and care.

What an historic abdication of responsibility is this posture among contemporary black political leadership, considering the blood that has been shed, the sacrifices that have been made, the determination, commitment, and dedication that have been shown by blacks of previous generations. While black youngsters in the ghettos murder each other, poison their bodies and their minds with drugs and promiscuous sex, and ignore their responsibilities to their children, their community, and their nation, there is no place in the political lexicon of black leaders for talk of values, morality, and virtue. If we can quote the Bible's book of Amos in public, as Martin Luther King, Jr., famously did: "Let justice run down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream," then why not also the passage in 1 Corinthians concerning sexual immorality, in which Paul states: "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body." Which of these biblical injunctions is more relevant to the contemporary behavioral crisis aflicting black America?

Today's black leaders have become ever-ready "doomsayers," alert to exploit their people's suffering by offering it up to more or less sympathetic whites as justification for incremental monetary transfers. But this posture ignores the great existential challenge facing black America today. The challenge is that of taking control of our futures by exerting the requisite moral leadership, making the sacrifices of time and resources, and building the needed institutions so that black social and economic development may be advanced. No matter how windy the debate becomes among white liberals and conservatives as to what should be done in the public sphere, meeting this self-creating challenge ultimately depends upon black action. It is to desecrate the memory of our enslaved ancestors to hold that, as free men and women, blacks should passively wait for white Americans, of whatever political persuasion, to come to the rescue. A people who languish in dependency, while the means through which we might work toward our own advancement exist, have surrendered our claim to dignity and to the respect of our fellow citizens. If we are to be a truly free people, we must accept responsibility for our fate, even when it does not lie wholly in our hands.

This is a point of genuine spiritual truth, but it is also a practical point with deep political implications. The fact is that promoting virtuous behavior amongst the black American poor is essential to achieving the political goals of a more inclusive social policy and expanded opportunity for this population. Whites do not need to be shown how to fear black youths in the cities, which is implicitly the view of advocates who threaten "long hot summers" if jobs programs and affirmative action are not expanded. Instead, whites must be taught how to respect and how to love these youngsters. An effective, persuasive black leadership must project the image of a disciplined, respectable, black demeanor. That such comportment is not inconsistent with protest for redress of grievance is a great legacy of the civil rights movement. But more than disciplined protest is required. Discipline, orderliness, and virtue in every aspect of life will contribute to creating an aura of respectability and worth. Such an aura is a valuable political asset and the natural by-product of living one's life in a dignified, civilized manner.

Because racial oppression tangibly diminishes its victims, in their own eyes and in the eyes of others, the construction of new public identities and the simultaneous promotion of self-respect are crucial tasks facing those burdened with a history of oppression. Without this, there can be no genuine recovery from past victimization. A leading civil rights advocate teaches young blacks the exhortation: "I am somebody." True enough. But the next and crucial question is "Just who are you?" The black youngster should be prepared to respond: Because I am somebody, I will not accept unequal rights. Because I am somebody, I will waste no opportunity to better myself. Because I am somebody, I will respect my body by not polluting it with drugs or promiscuous sex. Because I am somebody—in my home, in my community, in my nation—I will comport myself responsibly. I will be accountable. I will be available to serve others as well as myself. It is the doing of these fine things, not the saying of fine words, which proves that here is somebody to be reckoned with.

That is, whether or not the youngster is somebody has little to do with the color of his skin and everything to do with the content of his character. This inner-city youngster is not on his own in his struggle to live a more virtuous, more righteous life. None of us are. God is our co-pilot in this, as in all of life's journeys. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man; but God is faithful, He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability, but when you are tempted He will provide a way out so that you can bear it." Let us tell the youngster about this good news, so he will look for that way out.

The advocacy of a particular concept of virtuous living has virtually vanished from American public discourse. And it is un-thinkable that it would be invoked in the context of a discussion of race. Marriage as an institution is virtually dead in inner-city communities of our country. The vast majority of poor black children are now raised by a mother alone. But who will say that black men and women should get together and stay together more than they do now for the sake of their children? Who will say that young people of any race should abstain from sexual intimacy until their relationships have been consecrated by marriage? These are, in our present age, not matters for public discourse, and yet they are vital matters. These things must be said.

Nearly all of us would prefer on moral as well as pragmatic grounds that our fifteen-year-olds not be sexually active. But to take this stance publicly in response to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among young people is to invite ridicule from the highest government officials. The government, these officials argue, should confine itself to dealing with the consequences of moral lapses rather than taking on the issue of morality directly.

Now, we should not tilt at windmills. The emergence of morally authoritative public leadership seems highly unlikely at this late date. Evidently, we are going to have to look perforce to non-governmental agencies of moral and cultural development in particular communities to take on the burden of promoting positive behavioral change.

In every community there are such agencies of moral and cultural development. They seek to shape the ways in which individuals conceive of their duties to themselves, of their obligations mutually one to another, and, indeed, of their responsibilities before God. The family and the church are primary among these. They are the natural sources of legitimate moral teaching, indeed the only sources. If these institutions are not restored by the concerted effort of the people—and not their government—then the behavioral problems that we see about us will not be overcome. Such restoration obviously cannot be the object of programmatic intervention by public agencies. Instead, it must be led from the communities in question by the moral and spiritual leaders of those communities.

Glenn C. Loury is university professor and professor of economics at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. and has taught economics and public policy at Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of Michigan. Professor Loury has authored many scholarly works in the &Mac222;elds of microeconomic theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of income distribution. His latest book is One By One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (1995).